WhatsApp may soon add expiration dates to group chats so you don’t have to deal with a lot of clutter in your inbox.
If you open your Whatsapp today, we expect you to find a backlog of abandoned chats for long-delivered group projects, coordinating events that happened years ago , and talking to school friends you haven’t seen in a decade. . Most of these you may have long forgotten, with unnecessary chats clogging up your smartphone storage with messages and images from chats you no longer need.
According to a leak, WhatsApp is set to get a feature that will help unclog your inbox called ‘Expiring Groups’ (via WaBetaInfo (Opens in a new tab)). When the feature is added you should find it on the group info page; using it you can set when you will be prompted to ‘clean’ the group choosing either a day, a week, or a custom date. You can also remove the expiration date of the group.
Based on the leaked screenshot, each user has to set their own expiration date for the group, and it looks like WhatsApp won’t delete the group automatically. Instead, it seems to remind you that it might be time to leave the group or delete it, but the decision is yours.
We suggest taking this news with a pinch of salt, though. WaBetaInfo noted that the Expiring Groups feature is still in development – so not only is it apparently not ready for a full release, it’s likely to be some time before the feature goes into WhatsApp beta. That said, there’s a chance we’ll never see the feature roll out – the developers might decide to scrap it – or by the time Expiring Groups launches, it might work differently.
You don’t need to wait for this Expiring Groups launch if you want to delete old WhatsApp groups. In your Inbox long press the chat you want to delete and then tap the menu button in the corner (the three dots) that appears, then Exit Group. Alternatively, you can archive the chat so it’s out of your Inbox but you can return to the chat later if you want.
You can also send self-destruct messages if you want to delete the content of the chat, not the entire group chat.